The T&T Red Cross So­ci­ety (TTRCS) is push­ing back against find­ings in a De­cem­ber mis­sion re­port by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent So­ci­eties (IFRC), say­ing the doc­u­ment lacks con­text and re­lies too heav­i­ly on anec­do­tal claims.

On Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia pub­lished an ar­ti­cle de­tail­ing the find­ings of the re­port con­duct­ed by two IFRC rep­re­sen­ta­tives, past vice-pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Red Cross Harold Brooks and past pres­i­dent Dr Jaslin Salmon, of the Ja­maica Red Cross.

The team found se­ri­ous gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty fail­ures, main­ly with elec­tion le­git­i­ma­cy, ex­ec­u­tive over­reach and lack of fi­nan­cial trans­paren­cy.

In a me­dia re­lease post­ed to the TTRCS so­cial me­dia pages on Wednes­day, the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of the re­port but said the leaked doc­u­ment did not paint an ac­cu­rate pic­ture of the Red Cross.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTRCS, when pres­i­dent Jill De Bourg took up of­fice in 2018, the or­gan­i­sa­tion was plagued by op­er­a­tional and gov­er­nance chal­lenges, as well as di­min­ished re­sources. Since her tenure, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said, they had es­tab­lished the Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Acad­e­my for Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion, de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed the Com­mu­ni­ty Re­silience Group Mod­el, es­tab­lished the Trail­blaz­ers and a strong youth pro­gramme, dig­i­talised op­er­a­tions and di­ver­si­fied in­come streams, in­clud­ing the launch of Red Ko­rner Cui­sine.

The re­lease said while the re­port point­ed to sev­er­al crit­i­cal is­sues for the TTRCS to ad­dress, many of the rec­om­men­da­tions had al­ready been im­ple­ment­ed or iden­ti­fied by the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil for ac­tion.

“One ex­am­ple of this is the com­ple­tion of out­stand­ing fi­nan­cial au­dits, which the TTRCS be­gan ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing in 2020,” the re­lease said.

The TTRCS said these au­dits were on track to be com­plet­ed by Au­gust and will be pre­sent­ed to mem­bers at the elec­tions sched­uled in the same month.

The TTRCS said it wel­comed sup­port from the IFRC and oth­er part­ners to help re­alise re­forms.

“We are grate­ful to all stake­hold­ers who have sup­port­ed us over many decades of con­tin­u­ous ser­vice to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and look for­ward to car­ry­ing out our mis­sions for many decades to come,” the re­lease said.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MPS­DFS) reaf­firmed that it cur­rent­ly holds no fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship with the hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In No­vem­ber last year, the min­istry with­held its an­nu­al sub­ven­tion of $730,000, cit­ing TTRCS’ non-com­pli­ance in sev­er­al key ar­eas, most no­tably, the fail­ure to sub­mit long-over­due au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

The min­istry said the TTRCS was a key civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tor and a val­ued stake­hold­er in so­cial ser­vices de­liv­ery and while fund­ing had been sus­pend­ed for now, the up­dat­ing of the records is un­der­way.

One mem­ber, who was not iden­ti­fied, said there was no for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and on­ly lapsed af­ter the north branch was shut down.

The north branch be­came non-func­tion­al around De­cem­ber 2024.